Tuesday, 24 February 2015

The context (it was the title of the book The Extreme Centre: A Warning by horrid UK-Pakistani neo-Marxist Islamophile, anti-Western, anti-White Tariq Ali) doesn't matter. These words struck me because we are in a situation in which not to take sides is - paradoxically - extreme.

If your civilisation and race and the religion of your forefathers are on the brink of extinction and you prefer to stand aside and do nothing, you are extreme, no matter how many more people are doing the same.

"Extreme" here is used not in the statistical sense of far-from-average but in the sense of describing an action or omission whose consequences are going to be momentous.

Israel’s top representative to the United Nations is demanding that the world body condemn the Iranian government for hosting a contest featuring Holocaust-themed cartoons.

Ron Prosor wrote a letter over the weekend to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and global delegates urging them to publicly censure the contest, which is scheduled to take place this coming April.

The contest organizers said the event is a response to the massacre of journalists at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo last month. The magazine was targeted due to controversial cartoons it had published depicting Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, in humorous situations.

The organizers argued that the event is in line with Western values that preserve humans’ right to freedom of expression.

The contest winners will receive awards, while one cartoon will be chosen for exhibition at a museum featuring Palestinian works of art in Tehran.

Friday, 20 February 2015

Did you know that in certain neighbourhoods in Israeli cities women are welcomed by signs inviting them not to enter the area unless they are dressed "modestly"?

How much do Gentiles in the West know regarding Israel - beyond the headline news about bombings of Gaza - and Judaism generally?

So-called "modesty signs", like the one pictured above, for years have been a common sight in ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods of Jerusalem.

They usually say: “Please do not pass through our neighborhood in immodest clothes” followed by a rather detailed description of the permissible clothing, for example "closed blouse, with long sleeves, long skirt, no trousers, no tight-fitting clothes."

Women are asked to obey the imposed dress code in wordings such as this: “Please do not disturb [or offend or violate] the sanctity of our neighborhood and our way of life as Jews committed to G-d and His Torah."

I wonder how many women dress according to the above description but, apart from Muslim women, my guess is that they are not numerous. That's what Jewish Orthodox women look like:

That's probably why Judge David Gideoni, who ruled in favour of a group of women who started a legal battle to have the signs removed, wrote: "The signs were meant to limit the use of the public domain by all women. This could create an expectation or understanding that the area in which the sign was posted belongs in practice to a certain population."

But what aggravates the problem is that Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods are not in remote areas: they are central parts of a big city. Many of these districts contain or are next to public buildings, offices or institutions, like health clinics and government departments. Jerusalem women need to travel to such places and, when they do, they shouldn’t be left with the choice of changing their clothes or being verbally or even physically harassed.

In Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law sometimes takes a back seat to the rule of God, zealots are on a campaign to stamp out behavior they consider unchaste. They hurl stones at women for such "sins" as wearing a red blouse and attack stores selling devices that can access the Internet.

In recent weeks, self-styled "modesty patrols" have been accused of breaking into the apartment of a Jerusalem woman and beating her for allegedly consorting with men. They have torched a store that sells MP4 players, fearing devout Jews would use them to download pornography.

"These breaches of purity and modesty endanger our community," said 38-year-old Elchanan Blau, defending the bearded, black-robed zealots. "If it takes fire to get them to stop, then so be it."

Many ultra-Orthodox Jews are dismayed by the violence, but the enforcers often enjoy quiet approval from rabbis eager to protect their own reputations as guardians of the faith, community members say. And while some welcome anything that keeps secular culture out of their cloistered world, others feel terrorized, knowing that the mere perception of impropriety could ruin their lives.

"There are eyes and ears all over the place, very similar to what you hear about in countries like Iran," says Israeli-American novelist Naomi Ragen, an observant Jew who has chronicled the troubles that confront some women living in the ultra-Orthodox world.

The violence has already deepened the antagonism between the 600,000 haredim, or God-fearing, and the secular majority, which resents having religious rules dictated to them.

Religious vigilantes operate in a society that has granted their community influence well beyond its numbers — partly out of a commitment to revive the great centers of Jewish scholarship destroyed in the Holocaust, but also because the Orthodox are perennial king-makers in Israeli coalition politics.

Thus public transport is grounded for the Jewish Sabbath each Saturday, and the rabbis control all Jewish marriage and divorce in Israel.

In recent years, however, the haredim have eased up on their long campaign to impose their rules on secular areas, and nowadays many restaurants and suburban shopping centers are open on the Sabbath.

These days, most vigilante attacks take place in the zealots' own neighborhoods.

...The unidentified, 31-year-old woman had left the ultra-Orthodox fold after getting divorced, according to the indictment filed by the Jerusalem district attorney's office. The indictment said her assailant tried to get her to leave her apartment in a haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem by gagging, beating and threatening to kill her. He was paid $2,000 for the attack, it said.

A 17-year-old who moved to Israel from New York five years ago said she was hospitalized after being attacked with pepper spray by a crowd of men outraged that she was walking down a Jerusalem street with boys.

"They can burn in hell," said the girl, who would identify herself only as Rivka.

She lives in Beit Shemesh, a town outside Jerusalem where the vigilantism has been particularly violent. Zealots there have thrown rocks and spat at women, and set fire to trash bins to protest impiety. Walls of the neighborhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly — spelled out as closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts.

'Stupid troublemakers' The state, catering to religious sensitivities, subsidizes gender-segregated bus routes that service religious neighborhoods. Ragen and several other women challenged the practice in Israel's Supreme Court after an Orthodox Canadian woman in her 50s told police she was kicked, slapped, pushed to the floor and spat upon by men for refusing to move to the back of the bus.

Another Beit Shemesh girl, who asked to be identified only as Esther, said zealots threw rocks, cursed and spat at a friend for wearing a red blouse — taboo because the color attracts attention.

...But the rabbis are afraid to condemn them, says Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, another community member.

"They can't come out against zealots who champion modesty. Here and there they write against violence, but the militants ultimately set the tone," he said.

Stores are targeted too.

'This store burns souls'
In August, a Jerusalem man was placed under house arrest on suspicion he set fire to a store in a haredi district of the city that sold MP4 players.

"It started about six months ago. They would come into the store, about 15 of them at a time, screaming, 'This store burns souls!' and they would throw merchandise on the floor and threaten customers," said 31-year-old Aaron Gold, a haredi worker at the Space electronic store.

One Friday night, just before the Sabbath was about to begin, "they smashed a window, doused the place with gasoline and lit a match," Gold said.

Now, a big sign behind the counter says, "All products sold in this store are under rabbinical supervision. By order of the rabbis, no MP4s are sold here."

Clothing stores that sell clothes regarded as provocative have been vandalized, and bleach thrown at merchandise.

Suspicion sparks attack Girls have been expelled from school after being seen talking to boys, a punishment that ruins their marriage prospects.

"It could be very innocent; she could be talking to her brother," Ragen said. But once thrown out of school, "no one — NO ONE — will take you in," she added.

In one case, the violence reached the highest levels of haredi society.

Three years ago, a son of Israel's Sephardi chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, was accused of kidnapping a 17-year-old boy, beating him at knifepoint and terrorizing him with snarling dogs because he had sought the attentions of the accused's unchaperoned sister.

The son was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail.

His sister married a different suitor the following year. [All emphases added]

Reading all this, I can't help being reminded of the Islamic world in so many ways.

We have all seen the video of ISIS's recent horrific beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya.

Mr Obama, how many Christian terrorists have beheaded Muslims? How can you compare violence in Islam with violence in Christianity?

US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf was interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball about the atrocity.

She mantained that “we cannot win this war by killing them [ISIS], we cannot kill our way out of this war”.

I don't know if it's possible to respond to an enemy that kills, beheads and burns people alive without the spilling of blood.

Harf went on to argue:

[The video of ISIS] underscores to people that it isn’t just a fight in Iraq and in Syria and that it’s not just a fight about dropping bombs on terrorists. It’s really how we stop the causes that lead to extremism in a place like Libya, the fact that there’s no governance, and there’s no opportunity for young people, it lets groups like ISIL grow there and flourish there, which is what you saw with this awful situation with these Egyptians that you just mentioned, but this is a longer fight, it’s fighting them on social media…they’re using social media to get converts to their cause and to spread their hatred all over the world. This week, we’re going to have over 60 countries here in Washington to talk about how do we combat this violent extremism together in the long-term, not just in the short-term fight.

Right now, what we’re doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq and in Syria, that’s really where they flourish…we’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them, so are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians they’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them, we cannot kill our way out of this war. We need, in the longer term, medium and longer term, to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…

[W]e can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance, we can help them build their economies, so they can have job opportunities for these people. You’re right, there is no easy solution in the long-term to preventing and combating violent extremism, but if we can help countries work at the root causes of this, what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47, instead of try to start a business? Maybe we can try– try to chip away at this problem, while at the same time going after the threat, taking on ISIL in Iraq, in Syria, and helping our partners around the world.”

This is a particularly absurd version of the old socialist position: it's the economy, stupid!

From Karl Marx to Bill Clinton, socio-communists believe that everything in human society is governed by the economy and every problem can be solved by trowing money at it.

"What makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47, instead of try to start a business?" is an especially ridiculous way of putting the question, in the context of Muslim jihadists. Materialists don't attach any importance to what people believe in, what doctrines and ideals inspire and motivate their behaviour.

That's why they're so badly equipped to deal with the Islamic threat, deriving as it does from a faith and frame of mind.

Harf's half-baked theory about how to address the big problem posed by ISIS echoes the "liberal" proposed elimination of crime in Western societies by getting rid of poverty and unemployment as its "root causes".

The Facebook page Australia says NO to Islam Sharia Law has the graphic above.

While Western kids learn how to avoid offending even the slightest sensibilities of all ethnic groups - except Whites - and religions - except Christianity -, Muslim children are taught different lessons: how to slaughter conscious animals and next how to slaughter humans, as the next video illustrates.

At a Muslim school for children, stuffed animals were used to accustom the youngsters to blood and violence, as the horrid (visually and acoustically) video below shows. The little ones are trained to slaughter sheep and other animals, including men.

They'll be ready for animal sacrifice, halal slaughter, beheadings and, if the worst comes to the worst, burning people alive.

Tuesday, 17 February 2015

This is the big difference. We are fighting purely in defence. We don't have the same passion.

They are fighting for Islam. We don't like it, but we must admit that it is a whole system of living one's life, guiding a state and establishing its laws.

What are we fighting for? The ability to believe in nothing, pursue as many material possessions as we can, dissipate our lives and use as many swear words as is humanly possible. Big deal! That is really going to put fire in our belly, certainly.

People can be prepared to die only for something they believe in with all of themselves.

That's why Christian martyrs are legions while it's difficult to come up with many secular martyrs.

And people can fight with courage and ardour only for something that excites their imagination.

We have no religion; we have an ideology—secular democracy. But the Muslim world rejects secularism and will use democracy to free itself of us and establish regimes that please Allah.

In the struggle between democracy and Allah, we are children of a lesser God. “The term ‘democracy,’” wrote Eliot, “does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike — it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God … you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.”

Germany used democracy to bring Hitler to power. Given free elections from Morocco to Mindanao, what kind of regimes would rise to power? Would not the Quran become the basis of law?

If Charlie Hebdo were a man, not a magazine, he would be torn to pieces in any Middle East nation into which he ventured. And what does a mindless West offer as the apotheosis of democracy?

Four million French marching under the banner “Je Suis Charlie.”

Whom the gods would destroy …

The first comment on Buchanan's article shows the shallowness of the materialistic view:

Napoleon once said “God is on the side of he who has the strongest battalion.” Not: “The strongest ideology”. History is littered with the corpses of intense oddball gangs that tried to hit way above their league and were crushed. Bullets and bombs are ruled by mere physics, not fervor.

There are indeed many more cases in history of armies or armed groups who defeated stronger forces. If combatants are not motivated, they will flee or surrender.

It's people who fight, with whatever is in their minds egging them on. Weapons - even the most sophisticated - don't fight. The laws of "mere physics" can do nothing in war without a desire to utilise them.

In the case of our decadent Western societies, in which living a comfortable and easy life is a primary goal, fighting whatever or whoever threatens this cosiness defeats the object. So, given a choice between losing comforts and security in the future for not having defended them or losing them now in order to defend them, people prefer to wait and see if any possible danger will disappear as if by magic. When they are convinced that it won't, it will probably be too late to put up a resistance.

But hey!, at least we have protected - by doing nothing - our desire to believe in nothing.

As this reporter writes this article, the weather in New Haven, Connecticut where Yale is located stands at -9 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill. Saturday is expected to have weather in the low 30s with snow and Sunday will be 20 degrees with snow and rain, according to the Weather Channel.

This is not the first time that the weather doesn't play ball with the climate change brigade.

Many global warming events in the past have been held at sub-zero temperatures.

It's unlikely, though, that even the worst weather will make believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming theory reconsider their views: when in 2013 the UK suffered its coldest March in 50 years, they saw that as a sign of global warming.

This is what philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper calls "ad hoc hypotheses": in plain language, excuses to keep afloat a debunked theory.

Friday, 13 February 2015

I think that there are two prominent phenomena which will soon make people aware of the fundamental importance and extent of the Jewish question in the present world.

The first phenomenon is the existence of Israel, a prime signal of Jewish ethnocentrism’s inevitable double standard when compared to the ethnically and culturally pluralist attitudes of Diaspora Jews in the West.

The second phenomenon is the exposure of how easy it is for Jews to ally themselves with (or taking the side of) Muslims, if it suits their interest either in their war against the White Gentiles - their perceived main Western enemies - or in other ways.

I'm referring to the recent UN documents revealing Israel’s support for ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria.

The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja’afari, has long complained of a conspiracy of Zionists and Syrian rebels to overthrow the country’s President Bashar Assad. Mr Ja’afari has declared that the extremists have an “undeclared alliance with Israel and are engaged in a secret agreement” with its regime.

Now, a United Nations report seems to vindicate his claims. It reveals that Israel has been doing more than simply treating wounded Syrian civilians in hospitals, and details direct regular contacts between Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers and armed Syrian opposition fighters, working closely together in the Golan Heights since the spring of 2013.

Thanks to the American intervention which got rid of Saddam Hussein - and ultimately to the US Jewish neoconservative movement and Israel lobby that instigated it ideologically and politically -, Iraq, once the strongest supporter of Palestinians (yes, contrary to popular Zionist assertions, they do exist), is weak and divided.

So it’s time to turn to another stable player in the region and potential enemy of Israel: Syria. The protracted civil war on the Syrian government is depleting the country’s army and devastating its infrastructure; rebuilding them will preoccupy Syria for a long time and defuse any military threat from it to Israel. Covertly, Israel is a crucial key player in prolonging this war and is the major beneficiary of maintaining what the Israeli pundit Amos Harel called the “stable instability” in Syria and the region.

But several recent developments have exposed Israel’s no longer discreet role, among which the UN documentation.

The new report was the work of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), UN observers in the Golan Heights, and was submitted to the 15 members of the UN Security Council at the beginning of December 2014.

The UNDOF 1,200-strong observer forces - contributed by six countries - have been monitoring since 1974 a buffer zone between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights, stretching about 70 kilometers from Lebanon in the north to Jordan in the south.

Reports by the UNDOF are regularly submitted to the UN Security Council, and since March 2013 have started to show that Israel admits wounded Syrians into the country for medical treatment in hospitals.

Initially the IDF claimed that this was only for medical assistance for civilians, but then UN observers witnessed direct contact between IDF forces and ISIS fighters.

The UN reports said that 89 rebels were transported into the Israeli-occupied zone between March and May 2014, while activists in southern Deraa province and in Quneitra quoted in media reports claim that communications increased between rebels and the Israeli military before the eruption of heavy clashes in the area.

Israel’s health ministry says about 1,000 Syrians have been treated in Israeli hospitals.

In answer to a question by i24News on whether Israel hospitalises members of al-Nusra Front (the al-Qaeda terror group in Syria) and Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, or ISIS), an Israeli military spokesman’s office admitted: “In the past two years the Israel Defense Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.”

Syria maintains that it has “information indicating that there were undercover agents among the wounded Syrians recently treated by Israel”:

She further claimed that Israeli officers are operating in Syria and monitoring the fighting in the war-torn country…

Assad himself told an Argentinean [sic] newspaper a few months ago that Israel is assisting the rebels fighting to topple his regime.

“Israel is directly supporting the terrorist groups in two ways,” he claimed. “Firstly it gives them logistical support, and it also tells them what sites to attack and how to attack them."

UN observations have been cut short, in part due to attacks on UN monitors by the very terrorists Israel is suspected of associating with, attacks that managed to prevent any further documentation.

Israel’s ties to militants have long been documented. In November 2014 members of Israel's Druze minority published a statement accusing the Israeli government of supporting all factions fighting against the Syrian government, including al-Nusra - the militant group loyal to al-Qaeda - and the Islamic State, not only by offering them medical care but also by supplying them with weapons. The Druze group had issued similar warnings in the past.

Whenever Israel strikes at Syria, it strikes at the only viable nation fighting ISIS in the region.

The main – if not only - force providing a defence for regional minorities, including Christians, Jews, Druzes and Muslims of all sects, is the Syrian Arab Army. Attacking it undermines its ability to curb what can otherwise become uncontrolled genocide carried out by extremists.

The UN and other reports have described transfer of crates of unspecified supplies from the IDF to militant rebels, sightings of IDF soldiers meeting with Syrian insurgents, and cases of Israeli soldiers opening up the fence to allow Syrians through who didn’t appear to be injured.

Witnesses on a late December’s RT TV documentary said they had seen Israeli forces in talks with armed, militant anti-Assad fighters.

Ehud Yaari, an Israeli fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on the Golan Heights, said that Israel is supplying Syrian villages with medicines, heaters, and other humanitarian supplies. The assistance, he said, has benefited civilians and insurgents.

This is part of a continuing process. In early December 2014 Syrian officials demanded the UN impose sanctions on Israel after Tel Aviv conducted airstrikes in the areas of Dimas, known to contain military bases and research centres, and of Damascus International Airport, damaging some facilities. This was the seventh major unprovoked air strike of its kind since 2011 and the fifth in the previous 18 months on Syrian defences.

The Syrians said the attack was a heinous crime against their sovereignty by a country which doesn’t hide its policy of supporting terrorism.

Israel claimed that it was a “defensive measure” as Syria was “hiding sophisticated weaponry destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon”.

It is odd, however, that Israel attacks what it’s called “regional threats” in Damascus while providing sanctuaries for terrorist groups like al-Nusra and ISIS by allowing them to maintain tanks and artillery along its borders.

That Israel’s aid to terrorist insurgents in Syria is not limited to medical assistance was also evident from what The Times of Israelreported in August 2014:

A Free Syrian Army commander, arrested last month by the Islamist militia Al-Nusra Front, told his captors he collaborated with Israel in return for medical and military support, in a video released this week…

“The [opposition] factions would receive support and send the injured in [to Israel] on condition that the Israeli fence area is secured. No person was allowed to come near the fence without prior coordination with Israel authorities,” Safouri said in the video.

…Following the meetings, Israel began providing Safouri and his men with “basic medical support and clothes” as well as weapons, which included 30 Russian [rifles], 10 RPG launchers with 47 rockets, and 48,000 5.56 millimeter bullets.

The Syrian opposition is willing to give up claims to the Golan Heights in return for cash and Israeli military aid against President Bashar Assad, a top opposition official told Al Arab newspaper, according to a report in Al Alam…

The Western-backed militant groups want Israel to enforce a no-fly zone over parts of southern Syria to protect rebel bases from air strikes by Assad’s forces, according to the report.

On 20 January 2015, Foreign Affairsinterviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who accused the IDF of conspiring with al-Qaeda. Asked what he thought Israel’s agenda is, he replied:

“They are supporting the rebels in Syria. It’s very clear. Because whenever we make advances in some place, they make an attack in order to undermine the army. It’s very clear. That’s why some in Syria joke: “How can you say that al Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force [a reference to its attacks on regime and Hezbollah positions in Syria].”…

“The question that we have is, how much will does the United States have to really fight terrorism on the ground? So far, we haven’t seen anything concrete in spite of the attacks on ISIS in northern Syria. There’s nothing concrete. What we’ve seen so far is just, let’s say, window-dressing, nothing real. Since the beginning of these attacks, ISIS has gained more land in Syria and Iraq.”…

So are you saying you want greater U.S. involvement in the war against ISIS?

“It’s not about greater involvement by the military, because it’s not only about the military; it’s about politics. It’s about how much the United States wants to influence the Turks. Because if the terrorists can withstand the air strikes for this period, it means that the Turks keep sending them armaments and money. Did the United States put any pressure on Turkey to stop the support of al Qaeda? They didn’t; they haven’t.”…

So are you suggesting there should be U.S. troops on the ground?

“Not U.S. troops. I’m talking about the principle, the military principle. I’m not saying American troops. If you want to say I want to make war on terrorism, you have to have troops on the ground. The question you have to ask the Americans is, which troops are you going to depend on? Definitely, it has to be Syrian troops. This is our land; this is our country. We are responsible. We don’t ask for American troops at all.”…

The US has backed the Syrian insurgents since early in the civil war, and is planning to train over 5,000 “vetted” rebels. During the same interview Assad argued that such US plans are "illusory" as these rebels would eventually defect to the jihadists: “They are going to be fought like any other illegal militia fighting against the Syrian army.”

There are no “moderate rebels” in Syria. Even the groups and leaders considered moderate by the West openly admit that they are working closely with the extremists and the most radical, who always end up having control over the anti-Assad opposition. Terrorist al-Nusra and the “moderate” Free Syrian Army have collaborated in the battlefield against the Assad regime. In short, Israel is supporting ISIS and terrorists.

And, even if the fantasy of moderate rebels were reality, helping these people would mean distracting and using up Assad’s resources for the battle against them, thus weakening the only viable force fighting ISIS in the region.

As the Syrian government has been saying since 2011, Syria is engaged in a war not against its own people or “pro-democracy” forces, but against extremists and terrorists.

Last January’s Foreign Affairs interview with Assad quoted above has an interesting ending:

If you were able to deliver a message to President Obama today, what would it be?

“I think the normal thing that you ask any official in the world is to work for the interests of his people. And the question I would ask any American is, what do you get from supporting terrorists in our country, in our region? What did you get from supporting the Muslim Brotherhood a few years ago in Egypt and other countries? What did you get from supporting someone like Erdogan?”

These policies’ advantage is not for the USA but seemingly for Israel: supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, like invading Iraq, served to destabilise the consolidated powers in the region. Assad continued:

“You [Americans] are the greatest power in the world now; you have too many things to disseminate around the world: knowledge, innovation, IT, with its positive repercussions. How can you be the best in these fields yet the worst in the political field? This is a contradiction. That is what I think the American people should analyze and question. Why do you fail in every war? You can create war, you can create problems, but you cannot solve any problem. Twenty years of the peace process in Palestine and Israel, and you cannot do anything with this, in spite of the fact that you are a great country.” [Emphasis added]

All this seems nonsensical and contradictory if you indeed start from the premise that US foreign and domestic policies are meant to benefit the US. But it immediately becomes rational if you see that American elites are at war with their own people and don’t act with their best interest at heart.

But in the context of Syria, what would a better policy look like?

"One that preserves stability in the Middle East. Syria is the heart of the Middle East. Everybody knows that. If the Middle East is sick, the whole world will be unstable. In 1991, when we started the peace process, we had a lot of hope. Now, after more than 20 years, things are not at square one; they’re much below that square. So the policy should be to help peace in the region, to fight terrorism, to promote secularism, to support this area economically, to help upgrade the mind and society, like you did in your country. That is the supposed mission of the United States, not to launch wars. Launching war doesn’t make you a great power.”

Assad’s suggested strategy is reasonable but is the opposite of what America is pursuing, because stability in the Middle East, by making Israel’s enemies stronger, is not in the interest of the Jewish state.

Which, while publicly condemning them, doesn’t hesitate to side with and help the terrorist groups capable of committing the worst atrocities, including beheading children, using women as sex slaves, and setting men on fire.

The new party Union of French Muslim Democrats (UDMF) is ready to present candidates in eight cities in the local elections to be held in France next month.

This week the UDMF has already submitted two candidates in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, and expects to do the same in seven other constituencies, including Marseille, Lyon and Nice.

Najib Azergui, who founded the UDMF in 2012, told the daily Le Parisien that his party wants to give voice to France's large Muslim community, which struggles to find representation in the traditional parties of the country.

According to Azergui, Islam is fully compatible with democratic values. I don't think that the reporter who intervewed him asked for any concrete example of Islamic democracy, luckily for Azergui.

The UDMF already has an elected councillor in Bobigny since last year, Hocine Hebbali.

The party wants an Islamic banking system, and investments in the halal food industry to create jobs. These jobs will obviously be only for Muslims, since the sole butchers allowed to slaughter animals to produce meat fit for Muslim consumption are the followers of Islam.

The party wants to repeal the French ban on headscarves in state schools and supports Turkey's entry into the European Union.

Most French voters ignore the existence of the UDMF.

Let's just hope that this is not one of the first steps towards the turning into reality of the fictional plot of French author Michel Houellebecq's latest novel Submission (the meaning of the Arabic word "Islam"), which envisions France ruled by a Muslim party in 2022 and sparked a media storm when it was published last year.

Thursday, 12 February 2015

According to an SWG poll, 65% of Italians believe that the risk of Islamic terrorist attacks in Italy is high or very high. Of the remainder, 26% think that the risk is low, while 3% (perhaps the terrorists themselves) said that this possibility is nonexistent. 6% didn't answer.

More than half of Italians (55%) believe that immigrants (whether legal or illegal) should be rejected or Italy risks becoming the crossroads of terrorism. Only 33% are in disagreement with this statement, while 12% avoided giving an answer.

If you read the media, though, you'll think that everyone wants to welcome more immigrants. The disconnect between the country and the media is growing by the day.

Not to mention the government, where the minority - rather then majority - rule is followed.

According to another survey conducted by IXE for Agora, 63% of Italians think that Italy is not ready to deal with any terrorist acts. Of the remainder, 26% said that the country is able to respond to attacks, while 11% didn't answer. In addition, 61% of Italians said that the Muslim community is not doing enough to isolate extremists and terrorists, and only 16% believe that the Muslim community is taking a strong position of condemnation against extremists. 23% of respondents did not express an opinion.

Black rioting and looting are not caused by any conflicts between US cops and black criminals, although these can be used as a pretext. Events in South Africa show that it is in fact a far more widespread, global phenomenon.

And in this case blacks form the country's majority, targeting a powerless minority: so, who's racist and xenophobic now?

For a week, at the end of January, a mob in South Africa lynched Ethiopians, Somalis and immigrants of other nationalities living in Nelson Mandela's country, and raided and looted their stores.

At least 4 people were killed and over 160 were arrested in Soweto, during a wave of anti-immigrant protests and violence.

The 19-year-old mother of an infant who died after being trampled by a mob during the looting said she was accidentally caught in the street chaos. Some witnesses, however, said the mother was herself pillaging when she was knocked down with her baby strapped to her chest...

In a separate incident, a truck carrying livestock overturned on a highway in the Johannesburg area last week, and people carrying knives and buckets descended on the injured cattle and slaughtered nearly three-dozen for their meat, according to Eyewitness News, a South African media outlet. The driver alleged that people on a bridge threw objects at his vehicle, causing it to crash.

These are savages, who don't care about human and non-human lives alike.

That the violence began in Soweto - the same district of Johannesburg that became the symbol of anti-apartheid protests - is particularly ironic.

The recent unrest, one of the worst in Soweto since the apartheid era, started on 19 January when a Somali national allegedly shot and killed a 14-year-boy who was among a group of people attempting to break into his shop.

That was the signal which started the crowd's rioting and targeting of immigrant-owned shops, in a repetition of what happened in the country during the episodes of xenophobic violence in 2008 that killed more than 60 people. Anti-immigrant attacks seem to occur periodically in South Africa.

The media, as usual, try to exculpate the criminals with references to "the frustration of the poor":

Such episodes reflect the predicament of South Africa, a regional hub with gleaming infrastructure projects where many people nevertheless feel marginalized by high unemployment, a lack of opportunity and a gap between rich and poor that is starkly visible in leafy, spacious suburbs, on the one hand, and the shacks and so-called "matchbox" homes of the townships where blacks were confined under apartheid.

Soweto came under the world's gaze in 1976 when it erupted in student-led protests. Parts of it are relatively affluent today, as malls, gyms and new homes attest. But poverty is still widespread.

But it's evident that these attempts to find excuses are due to the mob's skin colour, and to a lack of will to admit that black proneness to violence is not the fault of whites, with their "evil racism" and apartheid, after all.

Witness Phindile Shabangu said that the mother of Nqobile Majozi, the baby boy killed by the crowd, "was caught in a stampede after emerging from the shop with eggs and drinks, and that the mother didn't even notice her baby's dire state while she was trying to pick up fallen items."

Video footage showed rioters looting shops sometimes in view of police, and one clip showed an officer apparently participating in the free-for-all.

The Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa, a group representing immigrants, urged the government to approve hate crimes legislation that it said would curb a culture of "impunity."

Didn't they say that, with the end of apartheid, racism would be eradicated from South Africa?

The very symbol of the SS, the SS bolts or Runic "SS" (), consisted of runes, signs popular in Germanic neopaganism.

Nazism wanted to replace Christianity with a "völkisch" (folkish or racial) cult, a moral doctrine derived from the pre-Christian, pagan Germanic heritage. Cultic ceremonies and rituals were part of the everyday life of the SS.

The Third Reich commissioned studies concerning the beliefs of the pre-Christianised Germanic peoples, which concluded that these pagan ancestors believed in "a grand force or a grand god in the background of the multiplicity of gods and spirits who becomes visible in a multiple way in the universe, on earth and in the life of all beings and facts".

The sun was interpreted as "only one, but a very important and significant expression (of that force or god) in the surrounding events and in the life of the ancestors".

The supreme leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler consulted seers and fortune tellers.

In 1934, the year after the Nazis took power, Himmler signed a 100-year lease to take over Wewelsburg Castle, still existing south of the town of Paderborn in Northern Westphalia, Germany, to turn it into a leadership school for the SS.

Wewelsburg Castle, supposed to be the "Centre of the World" from 1941 on, is a visual testimony to the neo-pagan nature of Nazism.

The castle, the spiritual home of Hitler's SS, where Himmler brought together his senior officers, is awash with pagan symbolism.

The photo above shows the focal point of the Wewelsburg Castle, the circular Hall of the Supreme SS Leaders, in the North Tower. The occult runic symbol of a Black Sun is set into the Hall's marble floor.

Based on a 7th-century AD fertility symbol, the Black Sun (Schwarze Sonne in German) combines the Swastika with the stylised sig-runes associated with the SS. It was the architectural symbol of the North Tower of Wewelsburg Castle's position as the centre of the Nazi world.

The sun wheel is significant for the Germanic light-and-sun mysticism which was propagated by the SS.

A round table was installed in the Hall for the SS "knights" and for pagan ceremonies exalting Himmler's form of paganism above all other world religions.

The people of the village were 98% Catholic and therefore frowned upon the presence of the SS and their pagan rituals in their midst. It seems that the villagers continued to practice their Catholic faith in the church that is only yards from the entrance to the Wewelsburg complex.

Since the fall of the Nazi regime, satanists, attracted by the pagan symbolism, have broken into the crypt in the basement of the North Tower to celebrate black masses.

Going back to Question Time, what particularly appals me is that nobody, not even supposedly Catholic co-panellist Cristina Odone, objected to Galloway's defamation of a whole religion based on an unhistorical myth.

Everyone seemed extremely worried about sparing the sensitivities of both Muslim and Jewish minorities - even to the point that telling the truth was treated respectively as "Islamophobic" or "anti-Semitic" -, but not a soul gave a damn about false accusations and insults casually thrown against Christian Gentiles, who are still the majority in this land, which is founded on Christianity.

Western societies are the only ones in the world which are more concerned about their minorities than their majorities.

This is how a society loses its identity and cohesiveness and descends into chaos followed by downfall.

Add to that the horrified way all the panel looked at Cristina Odone when the semi-conscious (posh for "half-witted") Labour shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt shouted at her while she was talking about her teachers: "They were nuns!". It looked like she had been found out as the culprit in a murder mystery.

I went to a primary school run by nuns and I'm extremely proud of it, as I am of having a Catholic background.

Odone told the Catholic Herald: "Why is it acceptable to denigrate anything Catholic but bleat tolerance about every other religion?"

Friday, 6 February 2015

"Kyenge looks like an orangutan." This comment was made on 13 July 2013 during a political rally by the vice president of the Italian Senate, Northern League's senator Roberto Calderoli, in reference to Italy's former Minister for Integration Cécile Kyenge, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (pictured above).

For this comment senator Vito Crimi, belonging to comedian Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement party, had requested Calderoli's prosecution for defamation and incitement to racism.

Grillo's party had long been courted by Nigel Farage to persuade it to enter a European Parliament alliance with his UK Independence Party, which it did last June.

Now the Italian Senate's Committee on Elections and Parliamentary Immunity has rejected, by a majority, the proposal to grant the authorisation to proceed against Roberto Calderoli.

His behaviour is covered by the first paragraph of Article 68 of the Constitution, according to which "Members of Parliament cannot be called to answer for opinions expressed or votes cast in the exercise of their functions."

The newspaper Il Giornale remarks that it's lucky for Grillo's party that this immunity exists:

The Five Star knows a thing or two about insults. Beppe Grillo has built, in fact, an entire career on F-words. Profanity, criticisms, ridicule and outright insults are daily occurrences in the vocabulary of the Five Star people. But, if it's a member of the Northern League who raises his voice, then the followers of the Genoese comedian are ready to rattle the handcuffs.

The Five Star Movement party is a bitter enemy of the Northern League, which is much more straightforward in its protection of indigenous Italians and their culture against the Third World invasion.

That UKIP has chosen as an ally Grillo's party rather than the Northern League is an indication of its "moderation". Nevertheless, come the next general election in Britain in May, UKIP is the only party capable of shaking things up.

As these positions deserve to be exposed, I decided to reply to them in a new article: this.

The first comment is in answer to the point I made that what happens to Christians in Israel is usually favourably compared with what happens to them in Islamic countries. But is that the right comparison? Isn't Israel supposed to be democratic and Western?

Therefore, Israel should be judged by that standard and the way Christians and Christianity are treated in Israel compared with the way minorities and their religions (including Jews and Judaism) are treated in Western countries.

The first anonymous commenter says:

It's the opposite the aggression in Israel is done by arrogant antisemites, the cameras only roll when a Jew gets angry enough to respond, Christians set Jews up in Israel just like they do everywhere else. Where do you think Muslims learned these tricks?

The second anonymous commenter maintains (I’m reproducing the comment with all its mistakes):

No western standards , you are soi wrong about this it's scary. 300,000 antisemites marched through France last year, what about the treatment of Jews in your beloved Italy, proof Jews have been there for 2300 years such as caves, where are the Jews of Ita;y, how many vilent antisemitic incidents in Italy/ I think it is nearly 2 billion at this point in histopry. They have accused orthodox Jews of spitting everyone and they never actually do it. If you are so evil and blind that you can't see the media and many individuals lie about Israel, you shouldn't be alive. Then you falsely claim that Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post are standard papers, something you would not do for any other subject except to selectively prove your antisemitic thievery and lying point. haaratz has a daily article about how evil any religious Jews are and the the Jerusalem Post does too. You are wrong on this, the Western countries has and does treat Jews especially in Europe, worse than all other peoples combined. You are just bullying thye Jews with oibvious antisemitic bias and the same types of tricks Muslims use, in the media. Christians are treated better in Israel by infinity than Jews were in any Western country. Definitely Italy.

My dear anonymous friends (both of you), I wanted to answer you but I realise that you've done it very well by yourself.

By skipping arguments and launching into vituperative attacks without substantiating the wildest claims ("almost 2 billion anti-Semitic incidents" in Italy alone! I suppose it could be right if you consider anti-Semitic anyone who disagrees with you), you have demonstrated that my point was correct.

There is indeed a real question that dares not speak its name.

And it doesn't dare because you try to silence all criticisms of Israel or Jewish culture or behaviour with tired, old accusations of anti-Semitism (when not out-and-out neo-Nazism).

This reminds me of something. Oh, yes, your favourite people. Muslims try to silence all criticisms of Islam in the same way. Just replace "anti-Semitic" with "Islamophobic" and "neo-Nazi" with "racist".

I've read a very apt epigrammatic definition of anti-Semitism: "Once anti-Semitism was hate of the Jews, now it has become saying anything that Jews hate."

This is the ultimate taboo, an extremely fierce one. Anyone can be criticised except Jews. I know that I can write unfavourably about Muslims (that is actually easy these days), black people, homosexualists, Third World immigrants, non-whites in general. But on the rare – albeit very recently increasing – occasions I have criticised anything to do with Jewry, I have been insulted.

It's highly disingenuous of you to talk about anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe when you know very well that this is not due to the native Western people but to the immigrant Muslims. And immigrant Jews in the West have always been at the forefront of support for unlimited immigration and multiculturalism. Now they don't want to lie in the bed they've made for themselves. They move to Israel. Too bad indigenous, Gentile Europeans haven't stolen Arab lands to go to and establish an ultra-nationalist state where the "other" is treated as a second-class citizen.

It doesn't matter how long you've lived in a country (even 2,300 years as you say), if all this time you've cultivated your separateness, as Professor Kevin MacDonald documents, and considered yourself part of a group of superior humanity, the chosen people.

I've heard before all these stories of all sorts of people who set up the Jews, and I must say that sometimes I've fallen for them. But you can't fool all people all the time.

Interesting how neither of you could answer the documented fact that Israeli legislators have ripped up the New Testament and called for its burning, or the attacks on churches and writings of "Death to Christians". Are they all set-ups?

For letting people know about these truths you think I deserve to die: "You shouldn't be alive", as you nicely put it. So much for considering yourself victims. Now I know even better what must be like to be a Christian in Israel.

NOTE
The author of the YouTube video above introduces it thus:

"It is becoming a common occurrence in Israel to hear about Jews burning churches, spitting on Christian clerics, burning Christian Bibles and intimidating and harassing other Jews who believe in Jesus. Unfortunately this is almost unheard of from the Western media. If it was not for the internet this would be unknown to millions of people around the world.
Here I am presenting one example of the rampant discrimination and xenophobia against Christians that exists in the "Jewish state". Please feel free to copy and post this video in other sites."

Tuesday, 3 February 2015

Why shouldn't this man be (or have been) allowed to marry his dolphin sweetheart?

After all, it's only "love" that matters in holy matrimony, not building a family and a safe environment in which to raise kids.

It's all to do with "feelings" these days, little else is important, and obviously we are here talking about the feelings of adults. (The feelings of children of anomalous families carry little weight.) Love in particular, however defined. For some people, like paedophile Oscar Wilde who was paying to have sex with working-class rent boys, the definition of love is lust.

A man says he fell in love with a female dolphin, Dolly, in the 1970s and had a sexual relationship with her for a year.

In addition to this, there is the terrible reality of the captivity of Dolly at Floridaland amusement park (now fortunately defunct), where she was a "performing dolphin".

Reverend Wena Parry, 75, was told that stickers saying "Christ Must Be Saviour" and "Christ For Me" could be regarded as "modifications" and could invalidate her insurance policy.

She told BBC Wales that she believes she has been treated unfairly because of her religious beliefs by Age UK insurance.

Reverend Parry said she spent £120 on the red-and-black-lettered messages. "Every opportunity I have I want to tell people about Jesus. I reckon there must at least a million people who have read the texts on my car," she added.

Age UK has denied the existence of a religious motive behind the move, but hasn't provided any other explanation.

The company first became aware of the messages when the reverend submitted a claim on her insurance after thieves damaged her exhaust and stole a piece of the engine, and thus company officials saw the car's photographs.

Age UK told Reverend Parry in a letter: "These modifications do not fit our acceptance criteria for motor insurance and cover would have been declined if we had been made aware of these at the time of purchasing your policy."

Why on earth? It's difficult to think of what the word "Christ" on someone's car has to do with insuring the car in case of an accident.

Reverend Parry has wisely changed insurance company.

"There might be somebody within that company that hates Christianity." she said.

Indeed. And, considering that Britain is not only historically but still now constitutionally a Christian country - the Queen before being crowned had to swear allegiance to the Christian faith and the Church of England -, these anti-Christian attitudes are nothing short of subversive and anti-British.

I don't know how the media could get away with constantly describing Obama as a little genius. Maybe they think that because he'a Marxist and a black, and for those reasons the misrepresentation has been accepted more uncritically than it should have been.

He's not even very intelligent.

In this video, Obama shows that he doesn't know the basics of American history, and - what is particularly serious - of American presidential history.

Interviewed on NBC by Savannah Guthrie, Barack Hussein says: “We make beer. First president since George Washington to make some booze in the White House”.

He's never even taken a tourist tour of the White House, otherwise he would know that this august building hadn't yet been constructed at the time of Washington's presidency, and the first president to live in it was John Adams, the second President of the US.

The White House was built between 1792 and 1800, when, although incomplete, it became livable. In 1800 John and Abigail Adams moved in when the rooms were still unfinished.

When the third president, Thomas Jefferson, went to live in it in 1801, most of the outside structures were finished.

Perhaps Barack Hussein doesn't feel enough loyalty for America to experience the need to learn this great nation's history at primary school level. Perhaps it's not even his nation.

My friend, Italian journalist Alessandra Nucci, has written and sent me this article.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Italy has a new president, Sergio Mattarella, the first President to come from Sicily, and the brother of a lawmaker who was murdered by the mafia. The picture above shows the scene of the crime, where Mattarella, then a young university professor, is holding in his arms the body of his dying brother, Piersanti, Governor of Sicily.

In our system, it’s the Prime Minister who heads the government and gets to make the decisions, but it’s the President who is head of State and gets to decide who can be Prime Minister. Sort of like the monarch in a constitutional monarchy, but with a lot more leeway for making independent decisions.

This important figure today, because of the tragedy in his family, which he has never capitalized on, never playing the victim, can stand for the 99% of Italians who are NOT linked to the mafia and for the vast majority of the country who are even, directly or indirectly, VICTIMS of the mafia, down to even losing their lives.

So please, world, do away with your unfair stereotypes. Please realize that prejudice becomes rooted and indestructible when it is confirmed by an endless line of tv series where the noblest Italian trait is the gravity of Godfather Marlon Brando.

Not only is our real-life new President a symbol of the honesty and resilience of the average Italian, but he also disproves the loud and uncouth behavior depicted as being typical of Italians. Whatever else he may turn out to do, President Mattarella is honestly soft-spoken and dignified, a man of few words whose aplomb marks him out as more similar to an archetypical Englishman than a Sicilian.

I am sending this out because the international press very rarely says anything about Italy and if it does speak it is usually to register something that draws ridicule and scorn.

Subscribe Now: Feed Icon

About Me

Philosophy graduate, journalist, website creator and
blogger born in Italy and living in London. I have been London correspondent for Italian media, including Panorama, L'Espresso, La
Repubblica. I translated Peter Singer's book Animal Liberation into Italian.